Introduction to the 2023 Edition
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
From the Cotton Fields to the Desert Sands:
Living and Leaving the Delta Life
CHAPTER 2
“The Mississippi of the West”:
Jim Crow in Sin City
CHAPTER 3
“Bad Luck and Lousy People”:
Black Single Mothers and the War on Poverty
CHAPTER 4
“If It Wasn’t for You, I’d Have Shoes for My Children”:
Welfare Rights Come to Las Vegas
CHAPTER 5
Storming Caesars Palace:
Poverty and Power in Las Vegas
CHAPTER 6
Dragging Nevada Kicking and Screaming into the Twentieth Century
CHAPTER 7
“We Can Do It and Do It Better”:
Revitalizing a Community from the Bottom Up
CHAPTER 8
Can Welfare Mothers Do Community Economic Development?:
The Triumphs and Trials of Operation Life
CHAPTER 9
Maybe We Were Fighting History:
The Legacy of Operation Life
Epilogue—A New Era for Las Vegas
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index